Every Monday features a tip, exercise, inspiring quote or other tidbit to help boost your body image. For many of us, Mondays are tough. We may feel anxious and stressed out, anticipating an arduous week, especially if we didn’t get much rest and relaxation during the weekend. These kinds of feelings don’t create the best environment for improving one’s body image. In fact, you might be harder on yourself and easily frustrated. You might even feel like you’re walking on egg shells – with yourself! With these posts, I hope you’ll have a healthier and happier body image day, that’ll last throughout the week.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. It can be anything you do that’s healthy and helps boost your body image. I’d love to hear from you!

To so many people, weight loss signifies a positive future. It isn’t just losing weight for “health purposes.”

It’s finally nourishing our bodies or fixing the relationships in our lives – with ourselves, with food and with others. It’s finally accomplishing various life goals (like work, for instance).

And it’s finally being happier.

But does weight loss really deliver all of this?

I think that most of us – if not all of us – know in our hearts that all of these changes and more don’t magically arrive on a silver platter once we lose weight. (In fact, many of us probably spend more time being miserable trying to maintain a weight that isn’t natural or healthy for us.)

Those commercials with various celebrities saying how their food concerns disappeared after they started an eating plan (usually Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig) are beyond deceiving. Because in no way, shape or form do diets help you repair a relationship with food. In fact, they sabotage it.

If like Sara Rue in the Jenny Craig commercial, you don’t leave the house because you’re uncomfortable in your own skin, then there are deeper issues there that are important to work on.

Losing weight won’t make feelings of inadequacy and shame vanish.

Again, weight loss isn’t rainbows and unicorns. (Unfortunately our society says it is, so I know this connection is incredibly hard to sever.)

But here’s something that I realized after my own weight and food struggles – you can accomplish everything you want to accomplish regardless of your weight, size or shape right now. And a positive body image helps you; bashing your body does not.

Why wait to take better care of yourself or to work on being happier and healthier until you reach a certain weight?

So consider kick-starting this week on a high note: Pick three things you’ve been waiting to do right now.

Whether you’re waiting to do something until you fall in love with your body or until you’re thinner – whatever the reason – take a sheet of paper this instant and list your three things.

Your list might include:

Accept myself as I truly am

Pamper myself more often

Move my body and enjoy it

Or:

Be more adventurous (I used to think being thin would alleviate my anxiety; it just fueled and refueled it. I realized that I can work on having more fun without weight loss. It’s not a revolutionary epiphany but it’s a critical one!)

Have a healthy relationship with food

Look for a new job

If your list is a bit broad, make the goals more specific and concrete. How can you accept yourself? For instance, you might start working through some body image tips on Weightless or other blogs.

How can you move your body? You might start experimenting with various types of physical activities to find out what you truly enjoy.